The Roman
statesman might perhaps be right, when he pronounced any attempt to
bring Greece directly under the dominion of the Romans, and any
intervention of the Romans in Asiatic affairs, to be a political
blunder; but the opposition fermenting in Greece, the feeble arrogance
of the Asiatic king, the residence, at the Syrian head-quarters, of
the bitter enemy of the Romans who had already raised the west in arms
against Rome--all these were clear signs of the approach of a fresh
rising in arms on the part of the Greek east, which could not but
have for its aim at least to transfer Greece from the clientship of
Rome to that of the states opposed to Rome, and, if this object should
be attained, would immediately extend the circle of its operations.
It is plain that Rome could not allow this to take place.

When
Flamininus, ignoring all these sure indications of war, withdrew the
garrisons from Greece, and yet at the same time made demands on the
king of Asia which he had no intention of employing his army to
support, he overdid his part in words as much as he fell short in
action, and forgot his duty as a general and as a citizen in the
indulgence of his personal vanity--a vanity, which wished to confer,
and imagined that it had conferred, peace on Rome and freedom
on the Greeks of both continents.